Music Biz Tries To Finish The Job, Applies To Shut Down Pirate Bay

The music industry may have been pleased with securing a successful criminal conviction of the Pirate Bay’s four operators for assisting copyright infringement in April, but there was one small problem: as the Bay predicted, it made absolutely no difference to the running of the torrent-tracking site (right now, according to the site’s own stats, it’s clocking in at 1.18 million unique users per minute).

Now, as expected, the Swedish subsidiaries of the four major labels are looking to finish the job — according to Thelocal.se, Danowsky Partners has filed a lawsuit with the Stockholm District Court on behalf of the four majors, asking for Bay founders Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde to be fined if the site isn’t finally taken down. The labels also want the trio to stop speaking or writing about the case (given Sunde’s loose lips, that’s easier said than done).

The documents name Stockholm-registered Black Internet AB as the Bay’s web-hosting company — but the music industry may find the Bay’s hosting arrangements for its many servers a good deal more complex than that: Sunde told Wired.com in February: “The Pirate Bay is not in Sweden…It